The disclosure generally relates to an electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection device and, more particularly, to a silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) for providing electrostatic discharge protection for high voltage integrated circuits.
In related art, the silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) is often employed as an electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection device. Since positive feedback effect occurs during the operation of a traditional silicon controlled rectifier, the silicon controlled rectifier usually has a low holding voltage, and thus the traditional silicon controlled rectifier can only be employed as the ESD protection device for integrated circuits whose operating voltage is lower than 5V.
In traditional, the holding voltage of the silicon controlled rectifier may be raised by increasing the channel length or by using other extra auxiliary circuits. However, the size of the silicon controlled rectifier would be inevitably increased as the channel length of the silicon controlled rectifier increases, and the circuitry complexity and hardware cost would be increased when other extra auxiliary circuits are employed. Apparently, the above two traditional solutions are not ideal solutions.